The USSF (the governing body of all of youth soccer in the United States) has mandated certain changes to the way that youth soccer is played and run in the United States. NJ youth soccer has decided on fully adopting the changes for the next coming seasonal year (Fall 2016 / Spring 2017)

Of the many changes that will be implemented, the one affect the most players in LMSA and that we need to start preparing for now is the change to the Age group classification, also known as the Birth Year change. This change will affect the way all soccer organizations in the country classify their players into age groups. We will be going away from the current system known as (school calendar year) where each age group is sorted by players born between August 1 of one year to July 31 of the following year. The new system will have the age groups sorted by players born in a particular year. For example, the u8 age group for Fall 2016 will be all players born in 2009, and u9 will be all players born in 2008 and so on.

We will be in the process of reshaping many of our teams including holding tryouts for every age group. This will be necessary to meet the rostering requirements under these new age group rules, as well as put our teams in position to stay competitive in their respective leagues.